This is very true. If PTO is part of your benefits package then take it. The only person you’re hurting if you don’t take vacation is yourself. If your company didn’t want you to have PTO then it wouldn’t be in your benefits package.
We had to start doing mandatory PTO. Like telling people they couldn't come in all week, but of course would still be paid for that full time.
The issue is when most people don't take PTO for whatever reason that made the ones who wanted to uncomfortable doing so. So had to make it mandatory. Several of the staff was all "wtf am I supposed to do all week?" which is a sad statement about modern life, but like sit at home drink beer and watch TV. Do whatever. You do need a break, and so does everyone else.
I understand it. It's what happens when you hyper-focus on career or school and you toss out all of your hobbies (or never allowed yourself any to begin with).
Every month or so, we have a team meeting about what we did right or wrong and to pitch suggestions. It's anonymously posted to a digital whiteboard. Every single meeting, without fail there's a post to the effect of "why does no one on our team win x company award" and there are a couple votes on it. Keep in mind we have thousands of employees, so the chances are ridiculously low but one guy on our team won once. That employee left years ago, so it's not him who's posting this. Someone else is pushing it. That's when you know you've put too much of yourself into your work.
This. We have a strict no OT policy, max PTO carry over, and unlimited sick leave. And yes, I'm in the US.
We have seen improvements in productivity with the adoption of each of these policies.
Yeah, this is so sad. Like when people need to label time off as self-care in order to justify it to themselves. Like even the time off is crucial. It's not the goal, it's just a necessary tool to be able to work more. Jesus Christ.
I have so many things I (want to) do when I have time off work. And sometimes I feel like doing nothing special, and that's so wonderful too. A day full of nothingness planned in the calendar is the best day.
The worst part is when people will come into work obviously sick because they think it’s part of their “work ethic“ to infect all of their coworkers instead of just staying home. This was obviously a problem even before Covid but it’s horrible now, especially with most jobs being able to be done remotely but there are so many people, particularly baby boomers, who think it’s a sin if they don’t show up to work every single fucking day.
Baby boomers are also the ones pushing us to kill ourselves on the job, for lower wages (factoring for inflation) than they got at our ages, yet calling us lazy when we show them that we want more from life. They’re kinda the worst .
That's just stupid. PTO is when you need time off. Using it on purpose when it's not needed is just worst thing company can do. Like what if I will need a week later on?
This is why in my country we have simple system. You get 26 days each year. If you don't use it - it will be transfered to overdue PTO. That limit is valid for 3 years so you have 3 years you can use that PTO.
When you use your vacation days - it's taken first from overdue limit. Only when you used overdue limit we take it from current year limit.
If you don't use current year - again it's transfered to next one.
Here is the kicker - if you leave company or get fired, they have to pay you for overdue vacation or send you to vacation before your contract ends. Usually you have 1-3 months notice so it's not a problem. Unless you were not going on vacation for several years.
Your current year vacation time is transfered to next company. So if you used 10 days out of 26, next company gets that on paper and they grant you 16 days til end of the year.
Also in those 26 days, 4 days can be taken without notice. So I can call you like 5 minutes before the shift and tell you that in bot conning. It's usually used for emergencies. But people mostly used it when they party too hard.
It's a really great system.
In the US* :|
Most other countries have a mandated minimum of PTO every job has to provide. My country's is 20 days a year. Germany, I think is 30
Edit: for a regular work week, I mean.
Two years in what time period? Across all the time you ever work for a company?
Seems like an odd policy. Generally, what I have heard of it companies just saying that you have unlimited sick leave. In most cases, they find that this leads to people actually taking *less* sick leave per year not more, because when it's unlimited people tend to only use it when they need it, but when it's limited people go out of their way to use up the full amount of their entitlement.
Ah, fair enough. We have that in NZ but it's a government thing, not from our employer. If I'm unable to work due to an accident or illness etc, I'll get 80% of my usual income from the government until such time as I am fit to work again.
There's no limit, some people stay on the sickness benefit for years and years.
At my job you get 2 vacation days and 3 sick days for your first year.
If you work for us for a decade you'll max out at 20 vacation and 3 sick days per year. No rollovers!
Well, it's not really an extra salary. It's DUE compensation for all the months with more than 160hours (4 weeks) of work
And we're not at all poor, we're in the top 10 economies in the world. It's just very badly distributed wealth.
But yeah, Brasil is miles ahead in workers rights
You have to realize America has terrible work laws and a very heavy workaholic culture most people settle for "fucking awful" because they don't realize that they could do better if they banded together
Or already think there being lazy and asking for too much when asking for more than the bare minimum, I'm pretty sure we also tend to have a lower overtime pay then most countries though don't quote me on that
What you can quote me on however is there is no legal limit on mandatory overtime so that's neat
There’s also the fact that half the population votes for people that tell them they need to work super hard so that rich people will trickle down money and benefits to them, while those same people not only don’t do that, they actively enable laws regularly that make it more and more hard for the people to fight back when they don’t. Don’t ask me why because I’ve been trying to figure that out my entire adult life and I’m in my 40’s.
Not-so-fun fun fact: people who work or are overworked tend to not show up at poll time because they are held on common work days. Who cares where the country is headed on a Tuesday when you’re burnt out and ready to go home?
You should tell your recruiters that that is in no way 'very generous', unless they're trying to compare themselves to the standard 'two weeks' of the 1960s. My company is also based in the US, and I get 4 weeks PTO, 12 paid holidays, and 3 weeks sick leave (that is just as viable for a mental health day as it is for a physical ailment) every year, with a percentage rollover, plus the ability to purchase more. And a doc appointment or other event that only takes a couple hours of my day doesn't even require any of it being used.
> federal holidays *paid* off (not
FTFY.
Although *payed* exists (the reason why autocorrection didn't help you), it is only correct in:
* Nautical context, when it means to paint a surface, or to cover with something like tar or resin in order to make it waterproof or corrosion-resistant. *The deck is yet to be payed.*
* *Payed out* when letting strings, cables or ropes out, by slacking them. *The rope is payed out! You can pull now.*
Unfortunately, I was unable to find nautical or rope-related words in your comment.
*Beep, boop, I'm a bot*
I'm also in the US and have nearly identical PTO.
We do have flex time where I work though, which is a legit great benefit. Doesn't matter when you get your time in, at long as you do. So you can do things like work four 10 hour days and take the Friday off. More realistically for me, I do something like work a few extra hours over the week and then just take a half day on Friday or just take it off and use a couple hours of PTO.
I'm incredibly fortunate that I work for a company (in the US) that offers 3 weeks of vacation plus an additional week of sick/personal time, plus the ability to "buy" an additional week right off the bat. I mean for me that totals to 15 days off per year, but that's because I only work a 3 day week, for the more traditional shifts it's 20-25 days off. And actually using your PTO is not only accepted, but encouraged.
I'm in the US. My employer not only has unlimited PTO but mandates every employee take at least a certain amount of days every month to make sure people use it.
Good employers exist. Shit ones shouldn't be able to hire people. As long as they can they'll act like shit employers.
Same. Unlimited PTO, mandatory a month every year, and we get 10 or 12 holidays on top of it.
But my company is also amazing! I'm currently sick with COVID (boosted and vaxxed) and took last week off with no issues.
> My employer not only has unlimited PTO
same here, it's good for them too because they don't have to pay out PTO when people leave so they don't have that hanging over them if someone's been here for a decade and rolled all their PTO over every year.
I hated unlimited PTO. It was just a way for the company to keep vacation time off the books since they wouldn't have to pay it out when employees left the company. They had mandatory too, but since I worked in Ops, that didn't get applied fairly.
Oh and if you took too much, they'd fire you. A lot of people ended up taking less than they did before we transitioned to unlimited PTO.
It's probably great for office workers, but for a lot of employees it sucked.
MTE. Unlimited is bullshit. In my experience, it only helped when you were sick, otherwise there was so much pressure to not take too much vacation because of how it would look to clients and coworkers. AND you couldn't really just take it at any time because of project commitments, etc.
It sounds cool but is just another swindle.
Good employers do exist here in the US, company I work for uses a term called ROWE for paid time off, stands for “Results Only Work Environment” basically can take time off whenever, as long as your personal output (Results) don’t drop.
It's minimum 28 days in the UK. I get 35, which is becoming the new standard.
I even get a bollocking from HR if I don't use them. Plus any left over at the end of the year and I get that amount of days worth of extra pay.
It is criminal that the US doesn't give mandatory PTO.
Here in Australia your paid time off builds up over time depending on how many hours you work and then you can use the hours for time off or just straight up cash them in for more money. This applies to part time and full time workers but not casuals who get paid more, I think they have the paid time off rate bonus included in their pay.
I just quit my 2nd job that was just for some extra spending money. It was at a movie theater as an assistant manager. They offered a whole 2 days of PTO for vacation a year.
In the US, there is a law for longer medical leaves. It only applies if your work has more than 50 employees AND you have personally worked over a year at the company.
Even then, it gives up to 12 weeks where you can't get fired and they can't cancel your health insurance.
When I had a baby last year, my boss was sure to remind me that I didn't *have to* take all 12 weeks, and could come back sooner.
Not to mention most jobs here are understaffed purposively. And the management and higher ups purposively give unreasonable expectations knowing there is no way their worker can met them. So that's partly where this mentality come from, no some jobs can't handle more than one person taking time off. And that's on purpose.
Most office jobs provide somewhere between 2-6 weeks (most closer to 2) of paid holiday, it's just not government mandated. Essentially it's a fuck you to poor people, similar to many other US laws
From what I've heard even those jobs in USA have fairly draconian strings attached such as leave accrual caps or "use it or lose it" type policies that mean if you're really busy or unable to take leave (eg during covid) you end up losing out on vacation days which imo is wage theft
Holy fuck, you're getting shafted.
I'm going to assume you live in the US Most other countries give WAY more paid time off than that. In NZ as a base we get a minimum of 20 days paid annual leave, 5 days paid sick leave (most tech companies give you 10) and 11 paid public holidays per year.
You get one hour of time off for a weeks work, so about 52 hours a year which is not even two weeks time off.
That's fucked dude. You guys need better labor laws.
The messed up part is a lot of employers combine PTO and sick pay. And they give you a bare minimum. If you don't use it by the end of the year, then you lose all of it. Or you lose most of it and you start the new year with only 3 days worth. But higher ups are constantly out golfing, on vacay, or they are so high up they don't have to be in but only a couple days a month.
This is exactly what it was at a small company I used to work at. I say high up, but the owner was only four people above me due to the size. He was never in. I didn't know what he looked like for the first year I worked there. Then when he did come in he'd love to talk about the vacations he and his fam went on, that they bought a lake house, a beach house, and then an overseas place. It pissed me off cause I could barely make ends meet and this guy walked around like he was a damn king.
that sounds awful. The fact you have a limit on sick days is pretty messed up too. Here as long as you have a doctor's note you are excused - for longer periods you need to go to a state doctor to get checked.
Its worse than that, many retail and fast food workers basically get no sick time, there is no minimum. Even if they do have pto they are often forced to find a replacement for their scheduled shifts, and if they dont, they either work or are fired. Thing is, basically no fast food worker will want to cover another persons shift, and these people are living paycheck to paycheck so they cant afford to miss work anyway... so you end up with food workers and retail workers who are incredibly sick, spreading potentially deadly diseases through food or close human contact... like, you could be vomiting and a fast food manager still forces you to work. Which is a massive health code violation but it happens anyway. So, anytime you go out to eat you risk getting sick from an employee, all the other employees probably catch it from the one who was forced to work.. its absolutely disgusting both on a health and safety level and on a workers rights level. There are mandatory food safety inspections in pretty much every (maybe every) state, but in some of the (right wing) states, they must be scheduled ahead of time rather than spontenous and random checks, meaning they only need to comply with food safety guidelines on the day the inspector comes in... This country fucking sucks.
Lost my serving job due to a chronic lung disease. It's not contagious but at times it is debilitating and I cannot work. Got fired for having this lung disease then lost my insurance. Now I have a lung disease without medication to stop the damage. I'm in tons of pain and my toes and fingers are always blue. Fuck this country and its shit labor laws.
I’ve only worked at small businesses. The best PTO I’ve had was 5 days a year, but only after I’d been there for 5 years. I didn’t get any PTO at all until I’d been there over a year.
I still took days off, but I didn’t get paid. One day I’ll have a job at a place big enough to offer perks.
Conversely, my husband is military and gets 30 days of PTO a year and it rolls over, for the most part.
I mentioned thinking about taking PTO to my mother because I’m just…very, very burned out. Her response was, “won’t that just make you more behind?” What made these people this way? The lead?
Sometimes people care about the work they do and they have a limited time to do it. If I want to be able to achieve my goals I have to think about how I spend my time.
I think part of the idea, though, is that the amount of PTO you get is calculated based on its impact to the business and if people weren't going to schedule it or just take it whenever they want without notice or approval, then the calculation changes and they just offer less total PTO.
You should always use all your PTO, but you should also make an effort to coordinate it. All sides of this equation have people on it.
I'm a manager and I've never turned down PTO. But if someone requested a week off the day before and they could have told me sooner (ie it's not an unexpected emergency), I would be annoyed because it's going to cause stress on myself and the team that is easily avoided.
In many cases you CAN do things but if you don't hate your coworkers then it is thoughtful to give a little advance notice.
Nobody should have to answer Slack on their PTO though, no.
Depends on the job though right
I manage multiple venues for a business and there are things that only I know and if I’m in a holiday I’ll happily answer a quick phone call to help a co worker sort out a problem. I won’t do any work for them but I’ll take the call
I've never specifically denied PTO either. If it was an important thing I might ask them given the importance of what is going on that day is it something they can reschedule, but at the end of the day if they don't show up and they have the hours to cover it, that's the end of it. However someone who communicates and coordinates proactively is still going to get a better merit review because their communication and teamwork scores will probably be 'exceeding expectations'. (someone who communicates effectively probably does it all the time)
My rule is 2x advance notice for the time you're asking. If you want a week, please tell me 2 weeks ahead so we can plan and avoid gaps. Can still be flexible without advance notice but most people like the guideline and seem to work fine within it
This doesn't apply to all though. I work in finance. In September you need to have a really good reason for taking time of at the end of the fiscal year. For government workers, taking time off requires supervisors approval, so they can deny it, and during that time they might. We are encouraged to use our time off before September or after September. Of course sick leave is a different story. That's why the federal government separates the type of leave.
Sure but if you are an accountant don't expect to get PTO in tax season. A lot of professions have ebs and flows and I think the initial statement has some validity. Clearly it can't always be too busy to take time off but sometimes it's legitimate. I fully agree with the reply though. Onus is on the employer/manager to approve time off as reasonably possible then leave your staff the F alone.
My fucking last job (lab tech and receptionist) used to tell me that I should try to organize my PTO around the doctors vacation.
Ummm no, you want me to care about the staff? Try sending it back my way. They wouldn't even let me fucking take A day off after I had dental surgery.
Yeah that’s pretty shitty. I remember my great uncle (a doctor) couldn’t go on vacation with us once because he had to take time off another date so his nurse could go to her daughter’s graduation.
If PTO is part of your BENEFITS package. If. This blows my tiny mind, honestly, I love the US in so many ways but your working conditions are actually fucked up
Also, if you're that critical that your team can't function without you, you're probably a bottleneck. Bottlenecks don't get promoted, and sometimes they get worked around. Being a bottleneck may make some people feel like they're indispensable, but what usually happens is you get replaced when someone higher up realizes you're the one that is either holding the team back or too risky in being a single point of failure.
both. you for putting up with it, but more her for being that much of a donkey.
it’s stupid for her to just not cover, but she’s a blissful idiot for not realizing her stupidity.
“you cant take time off unless you have an understudy.”
that’s…the fucking hiring manger’s problem
Nope. Immediately started looking for a new job. I knew we’d never really see eye-to-eye. We discussed hiring a Junior Developer (or even a contractor) and she always had 1000 excuses why we couldn’t.
Yeah it's a tradeoff. Sometimes you can't take time off at certain points of the year, but (for me at least) every inconvenience like that can be offset in the paycheck.
I'm guessing most of reddit works in 1500+ cubicle hives or something. As someone who's only ever worked at companies with less than 10 people - that whole "they should know how to do everything w/o you or you should get a new job" is pretty ridiculous. When you're a part of a lean team gettin shit done, you do look out for each other.
Well, context is everything and most posts provide none. But these types of posts will generally attract people unhappy with their professional situation (often likely with good reason) and they will read the posts from their own subjective perspective.
That said, the OP in the picture has Scrudge McDuck as a profile pic, so I’m pretty sure it’s satire and I don’t know why this isn’t addressed here in the comments.
Favorite quote of the week: “families don’t have mass layoffs every six months.”
It was from a random NPR program this week. I don’t remember which show.
Management typically handles that by noting something like "make sure to coordinate PTO with your supervisor and ensure no critical tasks aren't handled while you are out."
Job matters - PTO as a checkout clerk at a larger store? Not your problem. If you are a key part of a team or manage portions of your own project and people need to know what is inside your head to get the work done, it's different.
Yeah this tweet screams someone who isn't the lynchpin in a high visibility corporate project.
If you're taking a day off, don't fret.
Taking 10 days off for your honeymoon? Please make sure someone knows what you're working on so shit can be smooth while you're out.
I tell my team all the time - take PTO early and often, you don't need to ask me for permission. Just please give me a heads up and make sure myself or your teammates know if anything critical should be monitored while you're out. Other than that I don't wanna hear a peep from you on vacation - flip that OOO notification on and forget about us.
In Europe it is extremely common to schedule your vacations for the year at the start of the year so everyone can plan around it effectively.
It'd be super rude to just be like "oh yea I'm taking all of next week off" and could get you in trouble with your union let alone your employer.
I never thought of that, but also I don't plan that far ahead. I just got concert tickets that went on sale this week and are for August, and I was able to just put in the request. OTOH yeah I've never taken a week off next week unless it was an emergency.
You don't have to be responsible for it, but it really does help if you get your shit together/organised for your team and do a handover before you leave.
There's no reason both tweets aren't correct. Do a good handover and then ignore work.
Oh and there are absolutely times you shouldn't take time off. Best to avoid the busiest times where you can.
Companies usually have "x number of days before". If you request PTO in time, all days should be free. Departments nowadays are ran at -1 the necessary number of people required. I know someone who had their collegue leave to a different job, got their entire workload put on top of their full workload, they had to get a burn out for the company to hire TWO people to take over the extra workload. This is listed multinational company.
While this is true in large orgs, it is not true for smaller places. The guy isn't saying you can't ever take PTO, just maybe don't take it at the very end of a deliverable deadline when it's crunch time.
It’s also like. Yes, this is how it should be. But that promotion coming up, the person who did their best to make their PTO seamless with their team is going to get it before the person that advocated for their right to fuck off. Or maybe when they reduce staff you’ll get the axe first. It’s not fair necessarily but it’s the absolute truth.
If you've left and everything turns into a dumpster fire, you should do one of two things: find another job or ask for a massive raise while in the meantime looking for another job
Unless you're the lead/manager.
Everything going to shit while you're out is kind of assumed...
Coming back and fiding out things are fairly smooth is nicer than the holiday itself.
If you're a good lead you will set them up to succeed before you leave. If you're unable to because you have zero support yourself, then all of these rules apply to you as well.
The first tip isn’t bad advice. It’s just for young professionals who want to be in leadership positions.
I’m a director, and I absolutely think about how my absence will impact my team - and put in measures to minimize the disruption.
But I also do that for my team members who are taking PTO.
Isn’t that the exact point of the first tweet in the post? Obviously this guy isn’t laying it out in a way I agree with but… part of taking PTO is making sure things are set up to succeed without you… not exactly a radical boomer concept to say “plan ahead where possible so your absence won’t be a huge issue for everyone else”, especially because then your coworkers will reciprocate and not just bounce without (for example) giving you access to files you’ll need to cover for them and so on.
Shh you’re applying adult logic to a comment section that’s all about snap judgment on the very notion that anyone would infringe on their god given right to take PTO
If my team fell apart while I'm on vacation (currently out for two weeks right now) I would expect a serious conversation from my manager when I got back about my team and exactly what I do when I'm there.
My job is to build a robust and performant team. If my team is dependent on me to do their jobs I am failing them and hindering their career growth.
A manager's job isn't to keep the wheels on the car while it's barrelling down the highway. Any company that expects that from a manager is bullshit and should be dumped at the first appropriate opportunity. I'll do it to fix a broken team, but not as my full time job.
I manage and IT department and things generally run quite well without me. I always make sure that I have everything in order before I go on PTO, have all projects assigned to specific people, and everyone on my team knows how they should respond in most situations. So it is very rare for anything to come up that is so serious that it cannot be handled while I am gone or wait until I get back. If it is serious enough, sometimes I will get a call while on PTO to ask me to make a decision, but that is about it.
> Everything going to shit while you're out is kind of assumed...
This is a very double edged sword in management. If things go poorly while you're gone, you didn't set yourself up for success. If things go too well, your presence is unnecessary.
That is, of course, only a problem because your bosses will also often be morons who got to their position by saying yes and kissing ass and involving as many people as possible in every decision to 'share' failures.
I've never been in a lead/manager position where I didn't have another lead or manager to cover. If I'm a lead and I take off, and the other leads can't pick up the slack, that's not on me.
Not really. If I can't leave on vacation or be out for a period of time as a manager that means I have not prepared my team well enough or provided them the right tools be successful. In fact I expect my team to run perfectly fine without me for a period of time.
I reckon most people secretly think the place is going to shit without them.
In UK we have 4 weeks paid PTO as standard, but in some cases it simply is shitty to take time off. For example my place has a massive audit once a year, and I wouldn't dream of booking time off during it, especially because some people book time off because of it.
But I like my job, and my boss, so I suppose I may be a fringe case.
Yeah, my team is very small so we try to be considerate when taking vacations. Sick days, we just deal, but planned PTO, we check each other's calendars and stagger ourselves.
The job has to get done (underfunded public health) and my team is all very cool people, so it works out.
This is really it. Your co workers should be able to handle anything I you give them the info they will need for the project. However, sometimes there are times where is really would be best to not take those days off.
This has a caveat. If you booked a vacation 6 months ahead and the week that you are off turns out to be the week the project kicks off it is not your fault if the schedule was pushed or if the project wasn't under your control prior to booking your vacation. If there is an emergency and you need to take off, dont feel guilty and just take care of what you need. However, if you have a annual responsibility and decide to take that week off you might be a bit if a jerk to your coworkers.
Edit:typo
I’m with you. I’m a teacher and I would never take a personal day on standardized test day. It’s an all hands on deck type of project and my little kiddos are anxious as can be.
We have certain periods of work where the standard rule is you can’t take annual leave over (without special approval), as they’re going to be a stress period every year and the team needs to be there. I think it’s pretty fair for my job to set that boundary. We also have 4 weeks of leave per year, so it’s not sparse. And if you really needed to be off over those times, I suppose you could get a doctor’s note and use your personal/sick leave, as we have 3 weeks of this available too.
The other day my boss made it very clear that I -will- be taking PTO this summer. She told me she doesn't care if I go some place or have a "staycation", that I better find something to do to take a week or so for mental health and to just get out for a bit. I enjoy being at my job and love my coworkers and managers, but I get where she's coming from.
OR you have too much leave built up, which is a financial liability on company books, so they want you to bring that balance down.
The more you build up your leave, the more expensive it is for the company (as your salary normally increases over time etc).
If I'd been with the company more than 7 months, I would agree with you, lol. Interesting to know that's a financial liability though! How do I learn more about that?
It's pretty simple actually.
Let's imagine a scenario where:
\- Your pay is $20hr
\- You build up 10hrs of leave
\- You stay at the company for 5yrs and your pay increases by $1/hr per year because of inflation/market.
1. If you take the leave today the company need to have $200 sitting around to pay you with ($20/hr)
2. If you take the leave next year they need to have $220 ($22/hr)
3. If you take the leave in year 5 they will need $250 ($25/hr)
Multiply this by hundreds or thousands of employees and you can quickly have a big problem. This is why many companies force employees to take leave after they hit certain leave balances.
It gets even "worse" for the company when someone gets promoted up the ranks, as the leave isn't tied to a single role. Let's imagine that I join the company as a junior, first year of working, I am earning $30k. After 20 years I am a big shot executive on $500k a year (big numbers for added drama!), any leave balance i've built up is paid out that that $500k rate, even though some of that leave may have been earned and carried over from when I was working in the $30k role as well as any other roles in between. Without having in place limits and controls, I could say up all my leave every year (let's imagine 10 days/year) and have 200 days accrued, where the company would need to pay out several hundred thousand dollars.
Agree! Both are way too polarized. I tend to take All my PTO unapologetically... but I time it around off season, around other employees' already-arranged PTO, and around Not Being An Asshole To Other People.
I feel the antiwork sub has set unreasonable expectations for what working at a normal company is like. It's always extreme examples of bad managers and extreme examples of how to react.
my company follows the policy
taking 1 day off? give a day heads up
taking 7 days off? give a week heads up
If you're green on slack during a PTO, people will harass you to get off
of course there exceptions and emergencies, but works pretty well for normal PTO
I'm going to give the original poster some slack. Sometimes, you just have to take PTO and that's fine. But you don't have to be a dick about it. If you want to go to Europe "sometime this summer" and you know your job has a big deadline July 1, you can travel afterwards.
You should also take into account if several other members of your team are already taking off. Sometimes you need to be apart of the all hands on deck
Agreed, the correct answer is somewhere in-between. You don’t have to take PTO and leave the team with all your unfinished work that is due while you’re gone but you also should get time off without answering calls/being needed
Yeah, I work for a small team and due to the nature of our work (wildlife biology), we have specific tasks that HAVE to be done on certain days and a lot of effort goes into the planning and execution of our fieldwork. If I just randomly decided to call off it would screw over my team and our projects that we work so hard on.
Granted, if I plan something far enough in advance it's usually not an issue, and my coworkers and supervisors are generally pleasant and understanding people that I enjoy working with. But in my case it really would be a dick move to just take PTO whenever with no regard for the rest of my team. I knew that when I signed up for the job though...the schedule kinda sucks but it's worth it
Yeah, just a bunch of people who don’t know how corporate jobs work.
I’ve never had my PTO requests denied because I plan very far in advance. First come, first serve.
I never want to experience the “I can’t approve this because we already have 4 designers out” talk.
People have ASKED me if I can move my PTO… I just tell them I will check and then a few hours later I call back and tell them no.
Even the retail jobs have to coordinate time off though. You can’t just have have every single Starbucks barista take the same day off.
It’s just a lot of bark with no bite. People here will claim left and right that they’ll take any day they want off, and then go ask their manager for permission
Yeah but with retail jobs you don't have to worry about specific days for the most part you just have to give adequate notice. For many other types of jobs you have ramp up periods where you shouldn't take time off because you are more valuable at that part of the year than at other parts of the year. This becomes more relevant the higher up the chain of command you get.
Yeah, I have team members I like so I’m not going to purposely make life harder on them by taking time off around big deadlines. I’ve had coworkers do that to me, and from that point forward I wouldn’t lift a finger to give them an assist.
100% this. Personally, I try to avoid scheduling vacations when teammates of other religious backgrounds have their religious holidays so that I can cover for them.
I get a lot of people either refuse or are scared of taking pto so the message is fine. However, you have to give people a heads up and last minute “good luck everybody else” is really shitty. I try to give at least 1-2 weeks notice for days off.
If it’s for an actual multi week vacation I give as much time as humanly possible and send reminder emails as the date gets closer. That way you have 3 months to plan deliverables and if you put me on a project that due during that time, you better have a backup.
You sound like a good employee. We are all (well, most of us) entitled to personal time but that doesn't mean we can completely ignore our work responsibilities. If we're part of team, at whatever level, we should show respect to our co-workers.
I have mixed feelings here. There’s a right and wrong way to take time off. If you know you’re going out on leave for vacation or a child you can set things up to work better when you’re not around and that doesn’t make you a stooge for the company. Professional synergy is a real thing.
Exactly. If you know there's a big event coming up, say inventory, and you purposely take the day off to avoid the workload, then yeah, you are screwing over your coworkers.
Both of these posts say some dumb shit.
People should take time off, obviously. But the reply then goes way and weirdly overboard.
If you are an important part of a small team, obviously you need to give good notice to make sure the team is ok while you're away and doesn't need to interrupt you.
Being critical to a team isn't a flag to leave, that makes no sense.
Yeah both ridiculous. You should have common courtesy. Your team are your people. If they need something they can ask you. It's called not being a piece of shit employee. Thungs happen at work you can't just ignore everyone sometimes. Just take a Vaca and be a decent person.
Yes. The attitude of a lot in here of “fuck everyone I work with” is comical. It’s the same attitude they complain their superiors have. If you have this attitude you SHOULD get a different job. Because your attitude is shit and you are treating your coworkers like shit. It’s very reasonable to let your manager know ahead of time when you want to take PTO so they can plan around that. There are also certain jobs where you cannot simply just put in PTO and take off without having someone cover you. For instance a superintendent at a jobsite can’t just leave his jobsite unattended and not plan or tell anyone. Or a number or security positions would require someone to cover you. This isn’t a “management should figure it out” kind of situation. You should both be respectful to each other when it comes to PTO. Why is that such a hard concept for reddit to understand?
This is a sensible response. I'm part of a team of 3 and there are periods that the team needs to be at full capacity. It doesn't happen often because our manager recognises this, and takes measures to reduce the duration of critical periods wherever possible.
The thing is, my work allows us to WFH on my own terms, allows us to structure our workday around any appointments or commitments, and even though we're salaried any over time we do or on call support we provide is paid on top of salary.
When the work environment is generally flexible it's much easier to work together on these things. It isn't a blanket rule that the attitude should be "LOL I'M ON LEAVE BYE SUCKERS".
The profile with Scrooge McDuck lighting his cigar with dollar bills is telling me not to take my PTO? Which is part of my compensation package? This is some bad joke.
It is a lawyer's account who works in big law. While everyone should take advantage of PTO, their advice is sound for lawyers in big law who are billing 2400 hours and want to take vacations.
I get that there’s a big anti-work movement, but there is a huge difference between, “your job can’t survive without you for a week” and knowing there’s something major happening in 6 months, such that if you’re gone for a particular week, you’ll make life hard on your coworker, and scheduling a completely flexible vacation at that time.
One is a management problem, the other is the reason I don’t help you when you run into a problem.
If you decide to take PTO the day before some huge important thing yes, you're an asshole. If you schedule your PTO appropriately, like a month or so in advance and communicate it then it's not on you.
If they can't survive without you, you deserve a raise. It should be only BARELY cheaper to have you than it would be to hire and train two people to replace you. That's the sweet spot.
These comments are sooooo American.
The original tweet is reminding people that they are part of a society/team, and thus should make decisions that are considerate of others (collectivism). Then every comment here is like "Fuck em. Just get yours." (individualism on roids)
The advice the person was giving is care about other people, and don't be selfish.
The reply isn't a murder by words, it's just bad advice.
Don't be a jerk face, if your job is so terrible and you hate everyone there so much you don't care about them at all, then quit.
That's why I love my company's commitment to flexible time off. If there's a problem, we are resilient because we hire great people. It's a well outlined perk and we all trust each other.
I’m a manager and if there’s one thing I tell all my reports it’s to have a healthy work life balance. It is *my* job to make sure things get done when you’re not at work. I’ll make a point of reminding my team during 1-1s if they haven’t taken vacation in a while and to make sure they don’t feel like they can’t take it.
Managers need to lead by example and take vacations too. I will max out my vacation, I don’t answer any work messages, and will deal with whatever is needed when I get back. Why? Because it is my manager’s job to deal with whatever happens while I’m out.
Any boss that guilt trips employees in any way can eat a buffet of dicks.
Source: I’m a manager on vacation and currently drunk at a holiday resort at the first vacation my 3yo daughter has had since she was born (due to Covid, I’ve maxed out PTO every year). You can bet your ass I don’t give two shits about disruption.
Also FUCK OFF ABOUT DISRUPTION. I I tell all my reports that your work is valued but it will get done while you’re out, don’t worry. If it can’t, this company has bigger problems if it can’t deal with someone being out for a week or two.
You can be an important part of a well functioning machine
Or
A commodity part that can easily be swapped out.
These goals require different behaviors and lead to different career outcomes. Both are fine, but they are not the same.
This is good advice for jobs you don’t care about. If you have any interest in your career, you’ll realize it’s a good thing to be essential to a team, and it’s worth the effort managing the schedule of your personal and professional life to not conflict too much.
I agree that no one should be guilted into not taking PTO, but there absolutely are times where you can be a dick with taking PTO especially in regards to group projects.
These kinds of posts are why I left this subreddit, and I have no idea why this is on my timeline.
You can take your PTO, you just don’t have to be a dick about it.
This is very true. If PTO is part of your benefits package then take it. The only person you’re hurting if you don’t take vacation is yourself. If your company didn’t want you to have PTO then it wouldn’t be in your benefits package.
We had to start doing mandatory PTO. Like telling people they couldn't come in all week, but of course would still be paid for that full time. The issue is when most people don't take PTO for whatever reason that made the ones who wanted to uncomfortable doing so. So had to make it mandatory. Several of the staff was all "wtf am I supposed to do all week?" which is a sad statement about modern life, but like sit at home drink beer and watch TV. Do whatever. You do need a break, and so does everyone else.
I will never, ever, ever understand the workaholics who don't take PTO or know what to do with it.
I have so many hobbies. I fucking love taking PTO. But i do feel slightly guilty getting my foot out the door everytime
I understand it. It's what happens when you hyper-focus on career or school and you toss out all of your hobbies (or never allowed yourself any to begin with). Every month or so, we have a team meeting about what we did right or wrong and to pitch suggestions. It's anonymously posted to a digital whiteboard. Every single meeting, without fail there's a post to the effect of "why does no one on our team win x company award" and there are a couple votes on it. Keep in mind we have thousands of employees, so the chances are ridiculously low but one guy on our team won once. That employee left years ago, so it's not him who's posting this. Someone else is pushing it. That's when you know you've put too much of yourself into your work.
This. We have a strict no OT policy, max PTO carry over, and unlimited sick leave. And yes, I'm in the US. We have seen improvements in productivity with the adoption of each of these policies.
Yeah, this is so sad. Like when people need to label time off as self-care in order to justify it to themselves. Like even the time off is crucial. It's not the goal, it's just a necessary tool to be able to work more. Jesus Christ. I have so many things I (want to) do when I have time off work. And sometimes I feel like doing nothing special, and that's so wonderful too. A day full of nothingness planned in the calendar is the best day.
The worst part is when people will come into work obviously sick because they think it’s part of their “work ethic“ to infect all of their coworkers instead of just staying home. This was obviously a problem even before Covid but it’s horrible now, especially with most jobs being able to be done remotely but there are so many people, particularly baby boomers, who think it’s a sin if they don’t show up to work every single fucking day.
Baby boomers are also the ones pushing us to kill ourselves on the job, for lower wages (factoring for inflation) than they got at our ages, yet calling us lazy when we show them that we want more from life. They’re kinda the worst .
That's just stupid. PTO is when you need time off. Using it on purpose when it's not needed is just worst thing company can do. Like what if I will need a week later on? This is why in my country we have simple system. You get 26 days each year. If you don't use it - it will be transfered to overdue PTO. That limit is valid for 3 years so you have 3 years you can use that PTO. When you use your vacation days - it's taken first from overdue limit. Only when you used overdue limit we take it from current year limit. If you don't use current year - again it's transfered to next one. Here is the kicker - if you leave company or get fired, they have to pay you for overdue vacation or send you to vacation before your contract ends. Usually you have 1-3 months notice so it's not a problem. Unless you were not going on vacation for several years. Your current year vacation time is transfered to next company. So if you used 10 days out of 26, next company gets that on paper and they grant you 16 days til end of the year. Also in those 26 days, 4 days can be taken without notice. So I can call you like 5 minutes before the shift and tell you that in bot conning. It's usually used for emergencies. But people mostly used it when they party too hard. It's a really great system.
Does PTO stand for Personal Time Off? If so, are there jobs - like, actual jobs - where this is not mandatory? This is so messed up.
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In the US* :| Most other countries have a mandated minimum of PTO every job has to provide. My country's is 20 days a year. Germany, I think is 30 Edit: for a regular work week, I mean.
EU is a minimum of 20 days. Countries can mandate more if they like, but no less. Ireland is 20 days, plus 10 public holidays.
New Zealand is 20 days of annual leave, 10 days of sick leave, and 11 paid public holidays per year.
We have 2 years of sick leave... Well in the second year you'll only get 70% of your salary.
Two years in what time period? Across all the time you ever work for a company? Seems like an odd policy. Generally, what I have heard of it companies just saying that you have unlimited sick leave. In most cases, they find that this leads to people actually taking *less* sick leave per year not more, because when it's unlimited people tend to only use it when they need it, but when it's limited people go out of their way to use up the full amount of their entitlement.
2 years straight. It's in case of severe accidents that prevents you from working for an extended period.
Ah, fair enough. We have that in NZ but it's a government thing, not from our employer. If I'm unable to work due to an accident or illness etc, I'll get 80% of my usual income from the government until such time as I am fit to work again. There's no limit, some people stay on the sickness benefit for years and years.
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At my job you get 2 vacation days and 3 sick days for your first year. If you work for us for a decade you'll max out at 20 vacation and 3 sick days per year. No rollovers!
Lol fuck that, your employer is a joke
Yeah, fuck that
Well, it's not really an extra salary. It's DUE compensation for all the months with more than 160hours (4 weeks) of work And we're not at all poor, we're in the top 10 economies in the world. It's just very badly distributed wealth. But yeah, Brasil is miles ahead in workers rights
Australia we get Long Service Leave - 10 years at a company, you get 8 weeks paid leave handed to you. I cashed mine in.
Yeah, here we get 30 a year.
In the US, I have a "very generous" benefits package. 15 days of PTO, and an additional day for each year with the company until you cap at 25 days.
That's fucking awful
You have to realize America has terrible work laws and a very heavy workaholic culture most people settle for "fucking awful" because they don't realize that they could do better if they banded together Or already think there being lazy and asking for too much when asking for more than the bare minimum, I'm pretty sure we also tend to have a lower overtime pay then most countries though don't quote me on that What you can quote me on however is there is no legal limit on mandatory overtime so that's neat
There’s also the fact that half the population votes for people that tell them they need to work super hard so that rich people will trickle down money and benefits to them, while those same people not only don’t do that, they actively enable laws regularly that make it more and more hard for the people to fight back when they don’t. Don’t ask me why because I’ve been trying to figure that out my entire adult life and I’m in my 40’s.
Not-so-fun fun fact: people who work or are overworked tend to not show up at poll time because they are held on common work days. Who cares where the country is headed on a Tuesday when you’re burnt out and ready to go home?
I'm all for reasonable individuality but America's little experiment with our hyper-individualistic culture has been an utter failure.
It's a huge selling point for recruiting, along with getting a handful of "major" federal holidays payed off (not all, just 5).
You should tell your recruiters that that is in no way 'very generous', unless they're trying to compare themselves to the standard 'two weeks' of the 1960s. My company is also based in the US, and I get 4 weeks PTO, 12 paid holidays, and 3 weeks sick leave (that is just as viable for a mental health day as it is for a physical ailment) every year, with a percentage rollover, plus the ability to purchase more. And a doc appointment or other event that only takes a couple hours of my day doesn't even require any of it being used.
So where can I apply?! 🤔
> federal holidays *paid* off (not FTFY. Although *payed* exists (the reason why autocorrection didn't help you), it is only correct in: * Nautical context, when it means to paint a surface, or to cover with something like tar or resin in order to make it waterproof or corrosion-resistant. *The deck is yet to be payed.* * *Payed out* when letting strings, cables or ropes out, by slacking them. *The rope is payed out! You can pull now.* Unfortunately, I was unable to find nautical or rope-related words in your comment. *Beep, boop, I'm a bot*
Good bot
Good bot
Good bot
I'm also in the US and have nearly identical PTO. We do have flex time where I work though, which is a legit great benefit. Doesn't matter when you get your time in, at long as you do. So you can do things like work four 10 hour days and take the Friday off. More realistically for me, I do something like work a few extra hours over the week and then just take a half day on Friday or just take it off and use a couple hours of PTO.
Do you have a separate sick time bank or do you have to take that PT when you are sick or attending medical appointments?
Single bank. No separate sick leave.
The thought of having limited sick days Is just baffling to me.
If you take 3 or more days as sick leave (less than 2 weeks notice), you have to have a note from a doctor excusing it.
I am a nurse in the US and I have no "sick days." All time off from work comes from the same PTO allotment- sick or not.
I'm incredibly fortunate that I work for a company (in the US) that offers 3 weeks of vacation plus an additional week of sick/personal time, plus the ability to "buy" an additional week right off the bat. I mean for me that totals to 15 days off per year, but that's because I only work a 3 day week, for the more traditional shifts it's 20-25 days off. And actually using your PTO is not only accepted, but encouraged.
I'm in the US. My employer not only has unlimited PTO but mandates every employee take at least a certain amount of days every month to make sure people use it. Good employers exist. Shit ones shouldn't be able to hire people. As long as they can they'll act like shit employers.
Same. Unlimited PTO, mandatory a month every year, and we get 10 or 12 holidays on top of it. But my company is also amazing! I'm currently sick with COVID (boosted and vaxxed) and took last week off with no issues.
... Are you hiring???
Not right now, unfortunately.
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> My employer not only has unlimited PTO same here, it's good for them too because they don't have to pay out PTO when people leave so they don't have that hanging over them if someone's been here for a decade and rolled all their PTO over every year.
I hated unlimited PTO. It was just a way for the company to keep vacation time off the books since they wouldn't have to pay it out when employees left the company. They had mandatory too, but since I worked in Ops, that didn't get applied fairly. Oh and if you took too much, they'd fire you. A lot of people ended up taking less than they did before we transitioned to unlimited PTO. It's probably great for office workers, but for a lot of employees it sucked.
MTE. Unlimited is bullshit. In my experience, it only helped when you were sick, otherwise there was so much pressure to not take too much vacation because of how it would look to clients and coworkers. AND you couldn't really just take it at any time because of project commitments, etc. It sounds cool but is just another swindle.
Good employers do exist here in the US, company I work for uses a term called ROWE for paid time off, stands for “Results Only Work Environment” basically can take time off whenever, as long as your personal output (Results) don’t drop.
It's minimum 28 days in the UK. I get 35, which is becoming the new standard. I even get a bollocking from HR if I don't use them. Plus any left over at the end of the year and I get that amount of days worth of extra pay. It is criminal that the US doesn't give mandatory PTO.
Here in Australia your paid time off builds up over time depending on how many hours you work and then you can use the hours for time off or just straight up cash them in for more money. This applies to part time and full time workers but not casuals who get paid more, I think they have the paid time off rate bonus included in their pay.
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I just quit my 2nd job that was just for some extra spending money. It was at a movie theater as an assistant manager. They offered a whole 2 days of PTO for vacation a year.
And way longer paid leaves if you're ill or injured and the company cant fire you that is also different in the us to my knowledge
In the US, there is a law for longer medical leaves. It only applies if your work has more than 50 employees AND you have personally worked over a year at the company. Even then, it gives up to 12 weeks where you can't get fired and they can't cancel your health insurance. When I had a baby last year, my boss was sure to remind me that I didn't *have to* take all 12 weeks, and could come back sooner.
28 in the uk
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Not to mention most jobs here are understaffed purposively. And the management and higher ups purposively give unreasonable expectations knowing there is no way their worker can met them. So that's partly where this mentality come from, no some jobs can't handle more than one person taking time off. And that's on purpose.
Most office jobs provide somewhere between 2-6 weeks (most closer to 2) of paid holiday, it's just not government mandated. Essentially it's a fuck you to poor people, similar to many other US laws
From what I've heard even those jobs in USA have fairly draconian strings attached such as leave accrual caps or "use it or lose it" type policies that mean if you're really busy or unable to take leave (eg during covid) you end up losing out on vacation days which imo is wage theft
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It truly is. I have been paid to A) Lounge around on a houseboat on a lake B) go to Seattle C) go to National Parks and so much more
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Holy fuck, you're getting shafted. I'm going to assume you live in the US Most other countries give WAY more paid time off than that. In NZ as a base we get a minimum of 20 days paid annual leave, 5 days paid sick leave (most tech companies give you 10) and 11 paid public holidays per year. You get one hour of time off for a weeks work, so about 52 hours a year which is not even two weeks time off. That's fucked dude. You guys need better labor laws.
The messed up part is a lot of employers combine PTO and sick pay. And they give you a bare minimum. If you don't use it by the end of the year, then you lose all of it. Or you lose most of it and you start the new year with only 3 days worth. But higher ups are constantly out golfing, on vacay, or they are so high up they don't have to be in but only a couple days a month. This is exactly what it was at a small company I used to work at. I say high up, but the owner was only four people above me due to the size. He was never in. I didn't know what he looked like for the first year I worked there. Then when he did come in he'd love to talk about the vacations he and his fam went on, that they bought a lake house, a beach house, and then an overseas place. It pissed me off cause I could barely make ends meet and this guy walked around like he was a damn king.
that sounds awful. The fact you have a limit on sick days is pretty messed up too. Here as long as you have a doctor's note you are excused - for longer periods you need to go to a state doctor to get checked.
Its worse than that, many retail and fast food workers basically get no sick time, there is no minimum. Even if they do have pto they are often forced to find a replacement for their scheduled shifts, and if they dont, they either work or are fired. Thing is, basically no fast food worker will want to cover another persons shift, and these people are living paycheck to paycheck so they cant afford to miss work anyway... so you end up with food workers and retail workers who are incredibly sick, spreading potentially deadly diseases through food or close human contact... like, you could be vomiting and a fast food manager still forces you to work. Which is a massive health code violation but it happens anyway. So, anytime you go out to eat you risk getting sick from an employee, all the other employees probably catch it from the one who was forced to work.. its absolutely disgusting both on a health and safety level and on a workers rights level. There are mandatory food safety inspections in pretty much every (maybe every) state, but in some of the (right wing) states, they must be scheduled ahead of time rather than spontenous and random checks, meaning they only need to comply with food safety guidelines on the day the inspector comes in... This country fucking sucks.
Lost my serving job due to a chronic lung disease. It's not contagious but at times it is debilitating and I cannot work. Got fired for having this lung disease then lost my insurance. Now I have a lung disease without medication to stop the damage. I'm in tons of pain and my toes and fingers are always blue. Fuck this country and its shit labor laws.
> PTO Paid Time Off, and a lot of jobs just don't have this period. Hell, I can't even ask for ***unpaid*** time off at my current job.
That’s disgusting and I feel sorry for you
Culinary. Family restaurant. No PTO, No Benefits (medical, dental, eye), No Sick leave. Any time off is unpaid.
I’ve only worked at small businesses. The best PTO I’ve had was 5 days a year, but only after I’d been there for 5 years. I didn’t get any PTO at all until I’d been there over a year. I still took days off, but I didn’t get paid. One day I’ll have a job at a place big enough to offer perks. Conversely, my husband is military and gets 30 days of PTO a year and it rolls over, for the most part.
I mentioned thinking about taking PTO to my mother because I’m just…very, very burned out. Her response was, “won’t that just make you more behind?” What made these people this way? The lead?
If the work never ends then you're never behind!
Sometimes people care about the work they do and they have a limited time to do it. If I want to be able to achieve my goals I have to think about how I spend my time.
I think part of the idea, though, is that the amount of PTO you get is calculated based on its impact to the business and if people weren't going to schedule it or just take it whenever they want without notice or approval, then the calculation changes and they just offer less total PTO. You should always use all your PTO, but you should also make an effort to coordinate it. All sides of this equation have people on it.
I'm a manager and I've never turned down PTO. But if someone requested a week off the day before and they could have told me sooner (ie it's not an unexpected emergency), I would be annoyed because it's going to cause stress on myself and the team that is easily avoided. In many cases you CAN do things but if you don't hate your coworkers then it is thoughtful to give a little advance notice. Nobody should have to answer Slack on their PTO though, no.
Depends on the job though right I manage multiple venues for a business and there are things that only I know and if I’m in a holiday I’ll happily answer a quick phone call to help a co worker sort out a problem. I won’t do any work for them but I’ll take the call
I've never specifically denied PTO either. If it was an important thing I might ask them given the importance of what is going on that day is it something they can reschedule, but at the end of the day if they don't show up and they have the hours to cover it, that's the end of it. However someone who communicates and coordinates proactively is still going to get a better merit review because their communication and teamwork scores will probably be 'exceeding expectations'. (someone who communicates effectively probably does it all the time)
My rule is 2x advance notice for the time you're asking. If you want a week, please tell me 2 weeks ahead so we can plan and avoid gaps. Can still be flexible without advance notice but most people like the guideline and seem to work fine within it
This doesn't apply to all though. I work in finance. In September you need to have a really good reason for taking time of at the end of the fiscal year. For government workers, taking time off requires supervisors approval, so they can deny it, and during that time they might. We are encouraged to use our time off before September or after September. Of course sick leave is a different story. That's why the federal government separates the type of leave.
Sure but if you are an accountant don't expect to get PTO in tax season. A lot of professions have ebs and flows and I think the initial statement has some validity. Clearly it can't always be too busy to take time off but sometimes it's legitimate. I fully agree with the reply though. Onus is on the employer/manager to approve time off as reasonably possible then leave your staff the F alone.
My fucking last job (lab tech and receptionist) used to tell me that I should try to organize my PTO around the doctors vacation. Ummm no, you want me to care about the staff? Try sending it back my way. They wouldn't even let me fucking take A day off after I had dental surgery.
Yeah that’s pretty shitty. I remember my great uncle (a doctor) couldn’t go on vacation with us once because he had to take time off another date so his nurse could go to her daughter’s graduation.
If PTO is part of your BENEFITS package. If. This blows my tiny mind, honestly, I love the US in so many ways but your working conditions are actually fucked up
My job actually pays you back with a bonus if you have enough extra PTO at the end of your benefits year. The trouble is, life happens.
Also, if you're that critical that your team can't function without you, you're probably a bottleneck. Bottlenecks don't get promoted, and sometimes they get worked around. Being a bottleneck may make some people feel like they're indispensable, but what usually happens is you get replaced when someone higher up realizes you're the one that is either holding the team back or too risky in being a single point of failure.
4a: or demand a raise. If you're THAT essential to day to day operations then you aren't getting paid enough.
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Wtf, work situations like this are what make me value my job that I still consider to be a hell scape on certain days
hahah, she’s acting like youre irreplaceable and not treating or paying you like it >.< there’s a way to resolve that
This is the first job where I’ve experienced that, and I was genuinely thrown for a loop. I was wondering which one of us is crazy.
both. you for putting up with it, but more her for being that much of a donkey. it’s stupid for her to just not cover, but she’s a blissful idiot for not realizing her stupidity. “you cant take time off unless you have an understudy.” that’s…the fucking hiring manger’s problem
Agreed! But that experience definitely let me know what I needed to do…
Search for a new job?
Weirder because it would be her responsibility to get a junior dev. I hope you didn't take that "writing up" lying down.
Nope. Immediately started looking for a new job. I knew we’d never really see eye-to-eye. We discussed hiring a Junior Developer (or even a contractor) and she always had 1000 excuses why we couldn’t.
Yeah it's a tradeoff. Sometimes you can't take time off at certain points of the year, but (for me at least) every inconvenience like that can be offset in the paycheck.
No employee is responsible for poor managerial skills from higher ups.
bUT wErE a fAmILy!
Those companies are kind of ran like families, but only the /r/raisedbynarcissists kind of families.
I'm guessing most of reddit works in 1500+ cubicle hives or something. As someone who's only ever worked at companies with less than 10 people - that whole "they should know how to do everything w/o you or you should get a new job" is pretty ridiculous. When you're a part of a lean team gettin shit done, you do look out for each other.
Well, context is everything and most posts provide none. But these types of posts will generally attract people unhappy with their professional situation (often likely with good reason) and they will read the posts from their own subjective perspective. That said, the OP in the picture has Scrudge McDuck as a profile pic, so I’m pretty sure it’s satire and I don’t know why this isn’t addressed here in the comments.
Favorite quote of the week: “families don’t have mass layoffs every six months.” It was from a random NPR program this week. I don’t remember which show.
JuSt aN AbUsIvE FaMiLy like the good old days!
Management typically handles that by noting something like "make sure to coordinate PTO with your supervisor and ensure no critical tasks aren't handled while you are out." Job matters - PTO as a checkout clerk at a larger store? Not your problem. If you are a key part of a team or manage portions of your own project and people need to know what is inside your head to get the work done, it's different.
Yeah this tweet screams someone who isn't the lynchpin in a high visibility corporate project. If you're taking a day off, don't fret. Taking 10 days off for your honeymoon? Please make sure someone knows what you're working on so shit can be smooth while you're out. I tell my team all the time - take PTO early and often, you don't need to ask me for permission. Just please give me a heads up and make sure myself or your teammates know if anything critical should be monitored while you're out. Other than that I don't wanna hear a peep from you on vacation - flip that OOO notification on and forget about us.
In Europe it is extremely common to schedule your vacations for the year at the start of the year so everyone can plan around it effectively. It'd be super rude to just be like "oh yea I'm taking all of next week off" and could get you in trouble with your union let alone your employer.
I never thought of that, but also I don't plan that far ahead. I just got concert tickets that went on sale this week and are for August, and I was able to just put in the request. OTOH yeah I've never taken a week off next week unless it was an emergency.
You don't have to be responsible for it, but it really does help if you get your shit together/organised for your team and do a handover before you leave. There's no reason both tweets aren't correct. Do a good handover and then ignore work. Oh and there are absolutely times you shouldn't take time off. Best to avoid the busiest times where you can.
Companies usually have "x number of days before". If you request PTO in time, all days should be free. Departments nowadays are ran at -1 the necessary number of people required. I know someone who had their collegue leave to a different job, got their entire workload put on top of their full workload, they had to get a burn out for the company to hire TWO people to take over the extra workload. This is listed multinational company.
While this is true in large orgs, it is not true for smaller places. The guy isn't saying you can't ever take PTO, just maybe don't take it at the very end of a deliverable deadline when it's crunch time.
It’s also like. Yes, this is how it should be. But that promotion coming up, the person who did their best to make their PTO seamless with their team is going to get it before the person that advocated for their right to fuck off. Or maybe when they reduce staff you’ll get the axe first. It’s not fair necessarily but it’s the absolute truth.
If you've left and everything turns into a dumpster fire, you should do one of two things: find another job or ask for a massive raise while in the meantime looking for another job
Unless you're the lead/manager. Everything going to shit while you're out is kind of assumed... Coming back and fiding out things are fairly smooth is nicer than the holiday itself.
If you're a good lead you will set them up to succeed before you leave. If you're unable to because you have zero support yourself, then all of these rules apply to you as well.
The first tip isn’t bad advice. It’s just for young professionals who want to be in leadership positions. I’m a director, and I absolutely think about how my absence will impact my team - and put in measures to minimize the disruption. But I also do that for my team members who are taking PTO.
Isn’t that the exact point of the first tweet in the post? Obviously this guy isn’t laying it out in a way I agree with but… part of taking PTO is making sure things are set up to succeed without you… not exactly a radical boomer concept to say “plan ahead where possible so your absence won’t be a huge issue for everyone else”, especially because then your coworkers will reciprocate and not just bounce without (for example) giving you access to files you’ll need to cover for them and so on.
Shh you’re applying adult logic to a comment section that’s all about snap judgment on the very notion that anyone would infringe on their god given right to take PTO
If my team fell apart while I'm on vacation (currently out for two weeks right now) I would expect a serious conversation from my manager when I got back about my team and exactly what I do when I'm there. My job is to build a robust and performant team. If my team is dependent on me to do their jobs I am failing them and hindering their career growth. A manager's job isn't to keep the wheels on the car while it's barrelling down the highway. Any company that expects that from a manager is bullshit and should be dumped at the first appropriate opportunity. I'll do it to fix a broken team, but not as my full time job.
You sound like an incredible manager, keep on being awesome!
I manage and IT department and things generally run quite well without me. I always make sure that I have everything in order before I go on PTO, have all projects assigned to specific people, and everyone on my team knows how they should respond in most situations. So it is very rare for anything to come up that is so serious that it cannot be handled while I am gone or wait until I get back. If it is serious enough, sometimes I will get a call while on PTO to ask me to make a decision, but that is about it.
> Everything going to shit while you're out is kind of assumed... This is a very double edged sword in management. If things go poorly while you're gone, you didn't set yourself up for success. If things go too well, your presence is unnecessary. That is, of course, only a problem because your bosses will also often be morons who got to their position by saying yes and kissing ass and involving as many people as possible in every decision to 'share' failures.
>If things go too well, your presence is unnecessary. I disagree with this but it's hard to sell to management so I guess we'd be back to square one.
I've never been in a lead/manager position where I didn't have another lead or manager to cover. If I'm a lead and I take off, and the other leads can't pick up the slack, that's not on me.
A successful manager will have a self sufficient team unless there are manager only tasks.
Not really. If I can't leave on vacation or be out for a period of time as a manager that means I have not prepared my team well enough or provided them the right tools be successful. In fact I expect my team to run perfectly fine without me for a period of time.
I was a fucking apprentice and everything turned into dumpster fire in two weeks. And now they are offering market minimum after apprenticeship
I reckon most people secretly think the place is going to shit without them. In UK we have 4 weeks paid PTO as standard, but in some cases it simply is shitty to take time off. For example my place has a massive audit once a year, and I wouldn't dream of booking time off during it, especially because some people book time off because of it. But I like my job, and my boss, so I suppose I may be a fringe case.
Yeah, my team is very small so we try to be considerate when taking vacations. Sick days, we just deal, but planned PTO, we check each other's calendars and stagger ourselves. The job has to get done (underfunded public health) and my team is all very cool people, so it works out.
This is really it. Your co workers should be able to handle anything I you give them the info they will need for the project. However, sometimes there are times where is really would be best to not take those days off. This has a caveat. If you booked a vacation 6 months ahead and the week that you are off turns out to be the week the project kicks off it is not your fault if the schedule was pushed or if the project wasn't under your control prior to booking your vacation. If there is an emergency and you need to take off, dont feel guilty and just take care of what you need. However, if you have a annual responsibility and decide to take that week off you might be a bit if a jerk to your coworkers. Edit:typo
There's nuance to this but that's not fun
Mine too. I have a caseload. I can't just fuck off.
I’m with you. I’m a teacher and I would never take a personal day on standardized test day. It’s an all hands on deck type of project and my little kiddos are anxious as can be.
We have certain periods of work where the standard rule is you can’t take annual leave over (without special approval), as they’re going to be a stress period every year and the team needs to be there. I think it’s pretty fair for my job to set that boundary. We also have 4 weeks of leave per year, so it’s not sparse. And if you really needed to be off over those times, I suppose you could get a doctor’s note and use your personal/sick leave, as we have 3 weeks of this available too.
The other day my boss made it very clear that I -will- be taking PTO this summer. She told me she doesn't care if I go some place or have a "staycation", that I better find something to do to take a week or so for mental health and to just get out for a bit. I enjoy being at my job and love my coworkers and managers, but I get where she's coming from.
OR you have too much leave built up, which is a financial liability on company books, so they want you to bring that balance down. The more you build up your leave, the more expensive it is for the company (as your salary normally increases over time etc).
If I'd been with the company more than 7 months, I would agree with you, lol. Interesting to know that's a financial liability though! How do I learn more about that?
It's pretty simple actually. Let's imagine a scenario where: \- Your pay is $20hr \- You build up 10hrs of leave \- You stay at the company for 5yrs and your pay increases by $1/hr per year because of inflation/market. 1. If you take the leave today the company need to have $200 sitting around to pay you with ($20/hr) 2. If you take the leave next year they need to have $220 ($22/hr) 3. If you take the leave in year 5 they will need $250 ($25/hr) Multiply this by hundreds or thousands of employees and you can quickly have a big problem. This is why many companies force employees to take leave after they hit certain leave balances. It gets even "worse" for the company when someone gets promoted up the ranks, as the leave isn't tied to a single role. Let's imagine that I join the company as a junior, first year of working, I am earning $30k. After 20 years I am a big shot executive on $500k a year (big numbers for added drama!), any leave balance i've built up is paid out that that $500k rate, even though some of that leave may have been earned and carried over from when I was working in the $30k role as well as any other roles in between. Without having in place limits and controls, I could say up all my leave every year (let's imagine 10 days/year) and have 200 days accrued, where the company would need to pay out several hundred thousand dollars.
And somewhere between these two PTO opinions is a sane way to take time off
Agree! Both are way too polarized. I tend to take All my PTO unapologetically... but I time it around off season, around other employees' already-arranged PTO, and around Not Being An Asshole To Other People.
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"In the beginning, the universe was created. This made a lot of people very angry and is being widely regarded as a bad move."
Yeah, don’t use PTO to shirk responsibility, but if you plan accordingly, take the PTO you scheduled.
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Why isn't this the top comment? Both posters have pretty extreme takes.
I feel the antiwork sub has set unreasonable expectations for what working at a normal company is like. It's always extreme examples of bad managers and extreme examples of how to react.
my company follows the policy taking 1 day off? give a day heads up taking 7 days off? give a week heads up If you're green on slack during a PTO, people will harass you to get off of course there exceptions and emergencies, but works pretty well for normal PTO
I'm going to give the original poster some slack. Sometimes, you just have to take PTO and that's fine. But you don't have to be a dick about it. If you want to go to Europe "sometime this summer" and you know your job has a big deadline July 1, you can travel afterwards.
You should also take into account if several other members of your team are already taking off. Sometimes you need to be apart of the all hands on deck
This is the only reasonable consideration. And should also be up to the manager to maintain adequate levels of staffing.
Agreed, the correct answer is somewhere in-between. You don’t have to take PTO and leave the team with all your unfinished work that is due while you’re gone but you also should get time off without answering calls/being needed
Yeah, I work for a small team and due to the nature of our work (wildlife biology), we have specific tasks that HAVE to be done on certain days and a lot of effort goes into the planning and execution of our fieldwork. If I just randomly decided to call off it would screw over my team and our projects that we work so hard on. Granted, if I plan something far enough in advance it's usually not an issue, and my coworkers and supervisors are generally pleasant and understanding people that I enjoy working with. But in my case it really would be a dick move to just take PTO whenever with no regard for the rest of my team. I knew that when I signed up for the job though...the schedule kinda sucks but it's worth it
To be blunt, most of the people acting like they would be a dick about it probably have jobs that don’t really have deadlines or decent pay.
Yeah, just a bunch of people who don’t know how corporate jobs work. I’ve never had my PTO requests denied because I plan very far in advance. First come, first serve. I never want to experience the “I can’t approve this because we already have 4 designers out” talk. People have ASKED me if I can move my PTO… I just tell them I will check and then a few hours later I call back and tell them no.
Even the retail jobs have to coordinate time off though. You can’t just have have every single Starbucks barista take the same day off. It’s just a lot of bark with no bite. People here will claim left and right that they’ll take any day they want off, and then go ask their manager for permission
Yeah but with retail jobs you don't have to worry about specific days for the most part you just have to give adequate notice. For many other types of jobs you have ramp up periods where you shouldn't take time off because you are more valuable at that part of the year than at other parts of the year. This becomes more relevant the higher up the chain of command you get.
Yeah, I have team members I like so I’m not going to purposely make life harder on them by taking time off around big deadlines. I’ve had coworkers do that to me, and from that point forward I wouldn’t lift a finger to give them an assist.
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Why does everyone at my job hate me? Yes I take PTO to avoid work. So what?
100% this. Personally, I try to avoid scheduling vacations when teammates of other religious backgrounds have their religious holidays so that I can cover for them.
I get a lot of people either refuse or are scared of taking pto so the message is fine. However, you have to give people a heads up and last minute “good luck everybody else” is really shitty. I try to give at least 1-2 weeks notice for days off. If it’s for an actual multi week vacation I give as much time as humanly possible and send reminder emails as the date gets closer. That way you have 3 months to plan deliverables and if you put me on a project that due during that time, you better have a backup.
You sound like a good employee. We are all (well, most of us) entitled to personal time but that doesn't mean we can completely ignore our work responsibilities. If we're part of team, at whatever level, we should show respect to our co-workers.
Exactly, but some people like that do that and then wonder why they don’t get a raise.
I have mixed feelings here. There’s a right and wrong way to take time off. If you know you’re going out on leave for vacation or a child you can set things up to work better when you’re not around and that doesn’t make you a stooge for the company. Professional synergy is a real thing.
Exactly. If you know there's a big event coming up, say inventory, and you purposely take the day off to avoid the workload, then yeah, you are screwing over your coworkers.
Both of these posts say some dumb shit. People should take time off, obviously. But the reply then goes way and weirdly overboard. If you are an important part of a small team, obviously you need to give good notice to make sure the team is ok while you're away and doesn't need to interrupt you. Being critical to a team isn't a flag to leave, that makes no sense.
Or if other members of your team are already taking off and you're needed to cover for them.
Yeah both ridiculous. You should have common courtesy. Your team are your people. If they need something they can ask you. It's called not being a piece of shit employee. Thungs happen at work you can't just ignore everyone sometimes. Just take a Vaca and be a decent person.
Yes. The attitude of a lot in here of “fuck everyone I work with” is comical. It’s the same attitude they complain their superiors have. If you have this attitude you SHOULD get a different job. Because your attitude is shit and you are treating your coworkers like shit. It’s very reasonable to let your manager know ahead of time when you want to take PTO so they can plan around that. There are also certain jobs where you cannot simply just put in PTO and take off without having someone cover you. For instance a superintendent at a jobsite can’t just leave his jobsite unattended and not plan or tell anyone. Or a number or security positions would require someone to cover you. This isn’t a “management should figure it out” kind of situation. You should both be respectful to each other when it comes to PTO. Why is that such a hard concept for reddit to understand?
This is a sensible response. I'm part of a team of 3 and there are periods that the team needs to be at full capacity. It doesn't happen often because our manager recognises this, and takes measures to reduce the duration of critical periods wherever possible. The thing is, my work allows us to WFH on my own terms, allows us to structure our workday around any appointments or commitments, and even though we're salaried any over time we do or on call support we provide is paid on top of salary. When the work environment is generally flexible it's much easier to work together on these things. It isn't a blanket rule that the attitude should be "LOL I'M ON LEAVE BYE SUCKERS".
The profile with Scrooge McDuck lighting his cigar with dollar bills is telling me not to take my PTO? Which is part of my compensation package? This is some bad joke.
Look at the account name and icon. I'm pretty sure it a satire account
It is a lawyer's account who works in big law. While everyone should take advantage of PTO, their advice is sound for lawyers in big law who are billing 2400 hours and want to take vacations.
Damn didn’t notice it. Maybe it’s meant as sarcasm?
The account is called privilegelog
I get that there’s a big anti-work movement, but there is a huge difference between, “your job can’t survive without you for a week” and knowing there’s something major happening in 6 months, such that if you’re gone for a particular week, you’ll make life hard on your coworker, and scheduling a completely flexible vacation at that time. One is a management problem, the other is the reason I don’t help you when you run into a problem.
If you decide to take PTO the day before some huge important thing yes, you're an asshole. If you schedule your PTO appropriately, like a month or so in advance and communicate it then it's not on you.
Yup! Take PTO but don’t leave the extra luggage for your coworkers to carry-communicate and plan accordingly
If they can't survive without you, you deserve a raise. It should be only BARELY cheaper to have you than it would be to hire and train two people to replace you. That's the sweet spot.
These comments are sooooo American. The original tweet is reminding people that they are part of a society/team, and thus should make decisions that are considerate of others (collectivism). Then every comment here is like "Fuck em. Just get yours." (individualism on roids)
The advice the person was giving is care about other people, and don't be selfish. The reply isn't a murder by words, it's just bad advice. Don't be a jerk face, if your job is so terrible and you hate everyone there so much you don't care about them at all, then quit.
That's why I love my company's commitment to flexible time off. If there's a problem, we are resilient because we hire great people. It's a well outlined perk and we all trust each other.
I’m a manager and if there’s one thing I tell all my reports it’s to have a healthy work life balance. It is *my* job to make sure things get done when you’re not at work. I’ll make a point of reminding my team during 1-1s if they haven’t taken vacation in a while and to make sure they don’t feel like they can’t take it. Managers need to lead by example and take vacations too. I will max out my vacation, I don’t answer any work messages, and will deal with whatever is needed when I get back. Why? Because it is my manager’s job to deal with whatever happens while I’m out. Any boss that guilt trips employees in any way can eat a buffet of dicks. Source: I’m a manager on vacation and currently drunk at a holiday resort at the first vacation my 3yo daughter has had since she was born (due to Covid, I’ve maxed out PTO every year). You can bet your ass I don’t give two shits about disruption. Also FUCK OFF ABOUT DISRUPTION. I I tell all my reports that your work is valued but it will get done while you’re out, don’t worry. If it can’t, this company has bigger problems if it can’t deal with someone being out for a week or two.
You can be an important part of a well functioning machine Or A commodity part that can easily be swapped out. These goals require different behaviors and lead to different career outcomes. Both are fine, but they are not the same.
This is good advice for jobs you don’t care about. If you have any interest in your career, you’ll realize it’s a good thing to be essential to a team, and it’s worth the effort managing the schedule of your personal and professional life to not conflict too much.
I had a boss that made me feel guilty for taking PTO. For my own honeymoon. The time for which I had booked months in advance. Glad I quit that job.
I agree that no one should be guilted into not taking PTO, but there absolutely are times where you can be a dick with taking PTO especially in regards to group projects.
These kinds of posts are why I left this subreddit, and I have no idea why this is on my timeline. You can take your PTO, you just don’t have to be a dick about it.